Dr. Emamekhoo explains the background of the cancer drug shortage

In this video, Hamid Emamekhoo, MD, discusses the cause of the ongoing cancer drug shortage that is affecting the treatment of patients across tumor types, including genitourinary malignancies. Emamekhoo is a medical oncologist with a clinical and research focus on genitourinary malignancies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.

Transcript

The current carboplatin and cisplatin shortage is mainly driven by a company that was one of the largest suppliers of these drugs for the United States. After an FDA audit, they noticed some issues with the manufacturing and production process, and that company was shut down. So that caused a significant reduction in the supply for the US market for these generic drugs, cisplatin and carboplatin. The other manufacturers were not able to ramp up the production that fast or that much because these drugs are used to treat multiple types of cancers including some genitourinary malignancies. They’re used for multiple different cancers, such as gynecologic cancers, lung cancer, and head and neck cancers.

Transcript has been edited for clarity.